> As you yourself state he seems to have had an agenda for self-glorification and creating Turkey for Turks

As to "agendas" , the Christians use to say "Man proposes , God disposes". He might have dreamt of a purely Turkish Turkey and Turkey without that Islam which would always remind him of the death threats the caliph had once pronounced against him . But history had a different agenda for his "secularized" Moslem monoculture. This paradox is perhaps inadvertently revealed in the Kemalist Turkish flag which contains clearly Moslem symbols , doesn't it ?

He succeeded in his self-glorifying efforts remarkably well. If you happen to come to Nortehrn Cyprus or Anatolia you'll see it everywhere ad nauseam - his giant statues and pictures are ubiquitous , numberless . Saying a bad thing about him may cost you very dearly in Turkey.

As for his "Turkey for Turks only " slogan , it turned out to be a different way of saying "Turks for Muslims only" as there are practically no Turks who are non-Moslems and those numerous non-Turks either were Moslems or where forced to embrace Islam, as happened to those Greeks in Pontus who stayed on after the genocide between 1919-1922. Kemal's racist views were hardly implementable also due to the bastard nature of his Turks and those inconvenient minorities that remained - the Kurds e.g. . If you look at Turks' closest racial brothers from Turkmenia or Uzbekistan , you'll notice immediately the difference between them. The Turks have remained Turks only due to Islam which allowed them to dominate the empire they had conquered and exploited barbarously without disappearing as Turks . Leaving Islam is quite dangerous to Turks due to their cultural backwardness. The Turk without Islam is like a one-legged nomad. In case of a reverse he is lost .

> A person with a Muslim agenda instead of taking the trouble to send off commissions to Central Asia would send them to the Hijaz to get closer to the Islam of the Prophet.

It was not practicable at that time due to the state of war and general insecurity created by ibn Saud's ikhwans from Najd who conquered Hijaz and installed there a wahhabi regime and the "double monarchy" at that time . If the Turks had gone to Hijaz they would have been probably lynched by enraged Arab Turk-haters on the way.

> We see that happening with the Pakistanis, Malaysians and Indonesian Muslims. They want to forget their pre-Islamic past and become wannabe Arabs.

In case of Turkey there exists practically no pre-Islamic past for the Turks unless they are willing to re-emigrate to Turkmenia where they really belong.

> That is what is so disturbing about Islam, the imposition of as you say a 'monoculture' on all people on earth. The Ataturk, despot though he was, had no compunction in discarding the Arab-Islamic veneer imposed by Islam.

Again , it happened only because of some queer coincidence and can't be treated as a Mustafa Pasha's idealism and enlightenment. The caliph wanted his death. So he kicked the caliph off and to feel secure he had to fight all the caliph stood for. If you see Mustafa Kemal's career in chronological order you'll see his "secularism" was a late development enforced on him by singular circumstances. It was nothing spontaneous and genuine.

> An internet search brought this up: http://ffrf.org/fttoday/back/hitler.html , http://nobeliefs.com/hitler.htm After reading them and from what you have revealed Hitler and Ataturk seem like two sides of the same coin.1) ".....You will find it in Mein Kampf: "Therefore, I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's Work." et.

I don't really understand , dear Plato , what your point here is. If you want to clarify some things on Hitler's antisemitism, you should rather concentrate on his early years in Vienna and the Soviet Republic of Bavaria in the spring 1919.

The big difference between these two mass murderers was though that one was a success and critizing him - according to the "reformed" secular Turkish Penal Code article 301 - will get you now three years' sentence in prison or if you happen to do it abroad ( let's say in the USA - Turkey's never-failing patron and protector) four years. Or more probably some "grey wolf" will kill you before the police manage to arrest you.

The other mass murderer was a failure . If you are a criminal and yet win history - to paraphrase Churchill's notorious saying - "will be kind to you as you wrote it " but if you are a criminal and lose , woe is you !!!

> Hitler's anti-Semitism grew out of his Christian education. Christian Austria and Germany in his time took for granted the belief that Jews held an inferior status to Aryan Christians.

I don't know on what sources you base your statement here , dear Plato , but what you have said sounds more like an argument concocted by the Anglosaxon propaganda agency than by verifiable history. Almost all German Jews were assimilated in the 19th century and there were no laws restricting them (quite contrary to tsarist Russia where most European Jewry was stettled). Not to speak of a legion of brilliant patritiotic Jewish-German scientistis and scholars , between 1914-1918 c. 100 000 (a whole army !) German-Jewish soldiers fought bravely for Germany and got Iron Crosses and other medals for their services to the Fatherland. At that time Germany occupied large areas in the East with more than 3 mln Jews. And what policy did those alleged 'antisemites' carry out ? All antisemitic newspapers were immediately banned , most vocal anti-semites were imprisoned. The German authorities supported as far as they could the local Jews in building new schools, founding youth clubs , libraries, Jewish newspapers, organizing health service , cultural life etc. etc. I wish you had read read German documents from that time to see how generously Christian Germany treated Jews between 1914-1918 ! It was only when the German troops left the Eastern provinces that pogroms and tradtional antisemitism in Poland , Ukraine and the Baltic states erupted with renewed force.

History as it is written and taught by the victors has usually little -if any- resemblence with what happened.

As to Austria it was a different case due to its nationality problems and political instability.

> Jewish hatred did not spring from Hitler, it came from the preaching of Catholic priests and Protestant ministers throughout Germany for hundreds of years. The Protestant leader, Martin Luther, himself, held a livid hatred for Jews and their Jewish religion. In his book, "On the Jews and their Lies," Luther set the standard for Jewish hatred in Protestant Germany up until World War II. Hitler expressed a great admiration for Martin Luther.

Luther as a young man was quite sympathetic to Jews . With the success of his reformation he hoped he would be able to convert them . But as he realised he would never do that , he grew angry. It was his frustrating personal experience that blinded him. But still he was not such a blind antisemite as William Shakespeare . If you don't believe me , consult "the Merchant of Venice" and his Shylock. Luther who himself spoke Hebrew had many conversations with Jewish scholars of his day. At the time Shakespeare was writing his masterpiece , no Jews lived in Great Braitain. They were let in only when the Puritans came to power.

The German Lutheran Church in Poland with more than 600 000 Germans living here before 1914 was never antisemitic. It was the Polish Catholic Church that was antisemitic. And there were good historical reasons for that.

I'd suggest instead we should remember Luther's "Military sermon against the Turks" of 1529 as more important for us . After the lost battle of Mohacs , an event even more tragic than 9/11, he summoned upon all Christians fight the Turks to save Europe from the impending Osman yoke. A sermon still worth reiterating , I suppose.

> Just as true muslims are not enthusiastic for the Ataturk:

"True" Muslims , dear Plato, have probably never heard of or surely cared about statistics . So they are unable to understand historical processes that don't necessarily follow the agenda of the powers that be. Islam badly impairs human intelligence, you know.

> Robert Spencer's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, has this quotation from Hizb ut-Tahrir about Kemal Ataturk: "It was a day 79 years ago, and more specifically on the 3rd March 1924 that the kuffar were able to reap the fruits of their tireless efforts of plotting and planning, which they had expended for more than a hundred years. This (so-called Ataturk, the 'Father of the Turks'!) announced that the Grand National Assembly had agreed to destroy the Khilafah; and announced the establishment of a secular, irreligious, Turkish republic after washing his hands from responsibilityfor the remaining islamic lands which the kuffar occupied in the First World War....

...At that time the Islamic ummah was supposed to raise its sword in the face of this treacherous agent who changed Dar al-Islam into Dar al-Kuffar and realised for the kuffar a dream they had wished for a long time....."

Much as I respect and support all politically incorrect views I have to make two comments on the quote. In 1924 Mustafa Pasha wasn't Ataturk yet. He assumed that name ten years later.

"The Grand National Assembly had agreed to destroy" ? This is a euphemism . "The grand assembly was brutally forced to give its external agreement" would be a more exact phrase . This agreement was a formality . It had been carefully prepared by outright terror , blackmail, intimidation and even assassination . The Grand Assembly was first purged of all those suspect as opponents to Mustafa Pasha's scheme. Many old fighters from the first days of Mustafa Kemal in Sivas fell victim to this purges on the eve of the "agreement" expressed by the Grand Assembly.

> Ianus we have gone a bit off track with Sisyphus, Indian philosophy, the internet and entropy. I will limit myself now to the original statement that brought all this up.

I don't think so. We need some other perspectives and extra things to realise the singularity of Islam and its real meaning becomes clearer on such diversified background. We need some coordinates to measure the cultural spaces which Islam has attacked and is going to annihilate.

> Our discussion of Mustafa Kemal came up because of this:

> But your using the term Moslem Turks is of a piece with the use of Christian Nazis by Mulims to deflect accusations of atrocities committed by Muslims. You will be weakening your case about Muslim atrocities, which are practically numberless, if you let a secularist Ataturk's massacres take on the colour of a religious attack.

Our discussion came up , dear Plato, because - as I think - you seemed to identify Turkey as a model Moslem country where Islam had become "moderate" and "seculerised" . You seem to believe in Turkey's success myth as a modern country that broke with its Islamic past .

I had to voice my strong doubts on that account . Turkey has become even more Islamic at its heart than it was before. The boastful Kemalist propaganda should not mislead us into believing Moslems have been seculerised because the seemling omnipotent state ordered them to do so. Behind the stately secular hijab - so to speak - there is still hidden this old ugly toothless Moslem grin.

I quote from some of your posts:

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Mark my comment as a response to Nothing to choose between Ataturk and Hitler - two big mass murderers by Ianus

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".